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Two innocent men have been burned alive by a massive lynch mob after WhatsApp rumours branded them child abductors.
A large crowd gathered outside the police station after rumours spread about the two men.
A mob dragged two men out of a police station, savagely beat them and then set them on fire, killing them, after a false rumour was spread on WhatsApp about the pair being child kidnappers.
The mother of one of the men made a desperate plea for the crowd to stop as she watched the lynching unfold on a Facebook livestream.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-46145986
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Burned to Death Because of a Rumour on WhatsApp
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @03:22PM (10 children)
I really dont see any redeeming quality to facebook, whenever Ive seen a friends its filled with the most idiotic drivel and Im pretty sure everyone who uses it gets dumber. I mean this is an extreme case but they also push the more sophisticated msm fake news on people too, giving them a wrong impression about the world which leads to poor decisions (like this, but usually less extreme). Then there is the spying...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @03:57PM (6 children)
My girlfriend uses a combination of facebook, skype, snapchat, and whatsapp to keep in contact with friends and family spread across four countries. Her friends and family (besides her sister) are not idiotic so, at worst, conversations are the typical trivial topics of most social interaction that sustain relationships. As for the spying, she is living in the US but not a US citizen, so she is already subjected to all the spying that entails.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @06:01PM
Was the Disagree mod for "My girlfriend" or are you the idiotic sister?
If the former, then +1 Funny metamod for you and if the latter, then please try to learn about what blood types actually are before telling people they should change their diet based upon them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @07:27PM
If someone has a baby do they make a facebook for the baby and then wish the baby happy birthday on the baby's facebook page even though the baby cant read it?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday November 14 2018, @08:33PM
The disagree mod may be for the statement, "typical trivial topics of most social interaction that sustain relationships".
I deny that it sustains relationships, and instead turns them into thin veneers of one. Phone calls do better than texts, simply because they transmit more information. Video calls transmit even more. A two page written letter can transmit more information about the person and their life, than any 140-280 character "snippet".
The true sustaining of a relationship is based on effort, and the tremendous out-of-band communication that occurs when people meet physically. Social media is vapid, shallow, and only creates distances between people while engendering the delusion of a close-knit group of people, or family. At most it can supplement, not replace, real interactions with friends and family. If you think that 10 people sitting at a table all engrossed in their phones, barely paying attention to each other, is sustainable, then we have wildly different ideas of sustainable relationships.
I strongly suspect that the approximate 20% of the population that has nothing to do with social media in the US, and are not addicted to their technology, have similar observations and do not get what they need for a sustainable relationship through a shiny interface and megacorp spyware.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday November 14 2018, @08:57PM (2 children)
I keep in touch with all of my friends through email and have for 35 years. I guess we're just too old to see the advantages of facebook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @12:41AM
Same here (including ~35 years). Not tempted by FB at all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:32PM
Oh gee look at me I have friends I can keep in touch with? You insensitive clod!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday November 14 2018, @04:42PM (2 children)
Regardless of whether or not social media is awful, this kind of crap happens without social media, it is simply a tool. To say that "facebook caused a lynching" is like saying "guns caused a massacre."
Clearly if the person had a knife instead of a gun; there would have been less death, allowing people to react, perhaps preventing it entirely.
Clearly if there had been no social media; fewer people would have shown up to the lynching, allowing law enforcement to respond, perhaps preventing it entirely.
Does it mean we should ban guns and facebook? Probably not.
Does it mean they both should be regulated? Maybe?
How do you even regulate social media? It might be even more difficult to regulate social media than it is to regulate guns in the USA.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 14 2018, @06:19PM
Here's how:
1. Social media contents are completely under the control of the company hosting it, unless you're talking about diaspora* or something.
2. Most major companies can credibly be accused of committing crimes (e.g. tax evasion or falsely reporting numbers to investors).
So the government goes to those companies, and says "Hey, you need to stop allowing XYZ, or we're going to investigate you for your crimes." And they will, because the companies in question aren't in the business of free speech, they're in the business of mining user data to provide better-targeted advertising for other businesses.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by jb on Thursday November 15 2018, @04:54AM
Certainly, to date, no guns have ever caused massacres. Only crazed people using the guns for immoral ends.
However, with the continuing rise of autonomous weapons, it is only a matter of time before a "gun" (if you can still call them that) will cause a massacre.
The difference with facebook et al. is that they already use as much, if not more, AI than autonomous weapons and with far fewer safeguards.
So whilst I don't think facebook is capable of causing (cf. exacerbating) either a lynching or a massacre yet, chances are it will probably reach that milestone before "guns" do.